How We Became Israel

Peace means dominion for Netanyahu—and now for us.

Peace means different things to different governments and different countries. To some it suggests harmony based on tolerance and mutual respect. To others it serves as a euphemism for dominance, peace defining the relationship between the strong and the supine.

In the absence of actually existing peace, a nation’s reigning definition of peace shapes its proclivity to use force. A nation committed to peace-as-harmony will tend to employ force as a last resort. The United States once subscribed to this view. Or beyond the confines of the Western Hemisphere, it at least pretended to do so.

A nation seeking peace-as-dominion will use force more freely. This has long been an Israeli predilection. Since the end of the Cold War and especially since 9/11, however, it has become America’s as well. As a consequence, U.S. national-security policy increasingly conforms to patterns of behavior pioneered by the Jewish state. This “Israelification” of U.S. policy may prove beneficial for Israel. Based on the available evidence, it’s not likely to be good for the United States.

Here is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describing what he calls his “vision of peace” in June 2009: “If we get a guarantee of demilitarization … we are ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state.” The inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank, if armed and sufficiently angry, can certainly annoy Israel. But they cannot destroy it or do it serious harm. By any measure, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) wield vastly greater power than the Palestinians can possibly muster. Still, from Netanyahu’s perspective, “real peace” becomes possible only if Palestinians guarantee that their putative state will forego even the most meager military capabilities. Your side disarms, our side stays armed to the teeth: that’s Netanyahu’s vision of peace in a nutshell.

Netanyahu asks a lot of Palestinians. Yet however baldly stated, his demands reflect longstanding Israeli thinking. For Israel, peace derives from security, which must be absolute and assured. Security thus defined requires not simply military advantage but military supremacy.

Yet alongside perceived threat, perceived opportunity can provide sufficient motive for anticipatory action. In 1956 and again in 1967, Israel attacked Egypt not because the blustering Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser possessed the capability (even if he proclaimed the intention) of destroying the hated Zionists, but because preventive war seemingly promised a big Israeli pay-off. In the first instance, the Israelis came away empty-handed. In the second, they hit the jackpot operationally, albeit with problematic strategic consequences.

For decades, Israel relied on a powerful combination of tanks and fighter-bombers as its preferred instrument of preemption. In more recent times, however, it has deemphasized its swift sword in favor of the shiv between the ribs. Why deploy lumbering armored columns when a missile launched from an Apache attack helicopter or a bomb fixed to an Iranian scientist’s car can do the job more cheaply and with less risk? Thus has targeted assassination eclipsed conventional military methods as the hallmark of the Israeli way of war.

Whether using tanks to conquer or assassins to liquidate, adherence to this knee-to-the-groin paradigm has won Israel few friends in the region and few admirers around the world (Americans notably excepted). The likelihood of this approach eliminating or even diminishing Arab or Iranian hostility toward Israel appears less than promising. That said, the approach has thus far succeeded in preserving and even expanding the Jewish state: more than 60 years after its founding, Israel persists and even prospers. By this rough but not inconsequential measure, the Israeli security concept has succeeded. Okay, it’s nasty: but so far at least, it’s worked.

What’s hard to figure out is why the United States would choose to follow Israel’s path. Yet over the course of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama quarter-century, that’s precisely what we’ve done. The pursuit of global military dominance, a proclivity for preemption, a growing taste for assassination—all justified as essential to self-defense. That pretty much describes ourpresent-day MO.

Israel is a small country with a small population and no shortage of hostile neighbors. Ours is a huge country with an enormous population and no enemy, unless you count the Cuban-Venezuelan Axis of Ailing Dictators, within several thousand miles. We have choices that Israel does not. Yet in disregarding those choices the United States has stumbled willy-nilly into an Israeli-like condition of perpetual war, with peace increasingly tied to unrealistic expectations of adversaries and would-be adversaries acquiescing in Washington’s will.

Israelification got its kick-start with George H.W. Bush’s Operation Desert Storm, a triumphal Hundred-Hour War likened at the time to Israel’s triumphal Six-Day War. Victory over the “fourth largest army in the world” fostered illusions of the United States exercising perpetually and on a global scale military primacy akin to what Israel has exercised regionally. Soon thereafter, the Pentagon announced that henceforth it would settle for nothing less than “Full Spectrum Dominance.”

Bill Clinton’s contribution to the process was to normalize the use of force. During the several decades of the Cold War, the U.S. had resorted to overt armed intervention only occasionally. Although difficult today to recall, back then whole years might pass without U.S. troops being sent into harm’s way. Over the course of Clinton’s two terms in office, however, intervention became commonplace.

The average Israeli had long since become inured to reports of IDF incursions into southern Lebanon or Gaza. Now the average American has become accustomed to reports of U.S. troops battling Somali warlords, supervising regime change in Haiti, or occupying the Balkans. Yet the real signature of the Clinton years came in the form of airstrikes. Blasting targets in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Serbia, and Sudan, but above all in Iraq, became the functional equivalent of Israel’s reliance on airpower to punish “terrorists” from standoff ranges.

In the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush, a true believer in Full Spectrum Dominance, set out to liberate or pacify (take your pick) the Islamic world. The United States followed Israel in assigning itself the prerogative of waging preventive war. Although it depicted Saddam Hussein as an existential threat, the Bush administration also viewed Iraq as an opportunity: here the United States would signal to other recalcitrants the fate awaiting them should they mess with Uncle Sam.

More subtly, in going after Saddam, Bush was tacitly embracing a longstanding Israeli conception of deterrence. During the Cold War, deterrence had meant conveying a credible threat to dissuade your opponent from hostile action. Israel had never subscribed to that view. Influencing the behavior of potential adversaries required more than signaling what Israel might do if sufficiently aggravated; influence was exerted by punitive action, ideally delivered on a disproportionate scale. Hit the other guy first, if possible; failing that, whack him several times harder than he hit you: not the biblical injunction of an eye for an eye, but both eyes, an ear, and several teeth, with a kick in the nuts thrown in for good measure. The aim was to send a message: screw with us and this will happen to you. This is the message Bush intended to convey when he ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Unfortunately, Operation Iraqi Freedom, launched with all the confidence that had informed Operation Peace for Galilee, Israel’s equally ill-advised 1982 incursion into Lebanon, landed the United States in an equivalent mess. Or perhaps a different comparison applies: the U.S. occupation of Iraq triggered violent resistance akin to what the IDF faced as a consequence of Israel occupying the West Bank. Two successive Intifadas had given the Israeli army fits. The insurgency in Iraq (along with its Afghan sibling) gave the American army fits. Neither the Israeli nor the American reputation for martial invincibility survived the encounter.

By the time Barack Obama succeeded Bush in 2009, most Americans—like most Israelis—had lost their appetite for invading and occupying countries. Obama’s response? Hew ever more closely to the evolving Israeli way of doing things. “Obama wants to be known for winding down long wars,” writes Michael Gerson in the Washington Post. “But he has shown no hesitance when it comes to shorter, Israel-style operations. He is a special ops hawk, a drone militarist.”

Just so: with his affinity for missile-firing drones, Obama has established targeted assassination as the very centerpiece of U.S. national-security policy. With his affinity for commandos, he has expanded the size and mandate of U.S. Special Operations Command, which now maintains an active presence in more than 70 countries. In Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, and the frontier regions of Pakistan—and who knows how many other far-flung places—Obama seemingly shares Prime Minister Netanyahu’s expectations: keep whacking and a positive outcome will eventually ensue.

The government of Israel, along with ardently pro-Israel Americans like Michael Gerson, may view the convergence of U.S. and Israeli national-security practices with some satisfaction. The prevailing U.S. definition of self-defense—a self-assigned mandate to target anyone anywhere thought to endanger U.S. security—is exceedingly elastic. As such, it provides a certain cover for equivalent Israeli inclinations. And to the extent that our roster of enemies overlaps with theirs—did someone say Iran?—military action ordered by Washington just might shorten Jerusalem’s “to do” list.

Yet where does this all lead? “We don’t have enough drones,” writes the columnist David Ignatius, “to kill all the enemies we will make if we turn the world into a free-fire zone.” And if Delta Force, the Green Berets, army rangers, Navy SEALs, and the like constitute (in the words of one SEAL) “the dark matter … the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen,” we probably don’t have enough of them either. Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems willing to test both propositions.

The process of aligning U.S. national-security practice with Israeli precedents is now essentially complete. Their habits are ours. Reversing that process would require stores of courage and imagination that may no longer exist in Washington. Given the reigning domestic political climate, those holding or seeking positions of power find it easier—and less risky—to stay the course, vainly nursing the hope that by killing enough “terrorists” peace on terms of our choosing will result. Here too the United States has succumbed to Israeli illusions.

Andrew J. Bacevich is a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame.

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56 Responses to How We Became Israel

The title is a bit anachronistic–the behavior in question has been characteristic of empires since time immemorial, and has been observed in the US at times prior to the founding of the modern Israeli state.

And more recently, peace-through-strength was a longstanding Cold War policy; the difference being we had an adversary that was a legitimate existential threat.

But overall, this is spot on. Implicit in the idea of peace only being possible when the other side is weak, is the belief that we are peaceful, and the other side (i.e. the Iranians) are unhinged lunatics who will attack us just for spite should they get the chance, and without regard to our capabilities for an overwhelming response.

Romney’s comment about Russia being “our number one geopolitical foe” actually makes some sense in terms of the worldview described in this article. When the objective is supremacy and dominion, any other sphere of influence that could impede expansion of American dominion is an anathema. The supremacist worldview needs enemies to justify itself and inevitably results in generating them.

Let’s not forget, no matter how bad for non-combatants, who endure the heaviest casualties and are drained of means to pay for the wars, if not outright killed, war is the most incredibly profitable of enterprises for the few. That those few own our political parties and most media now means perpetual war and war profits. The whole world can become ignited and as long as they are immune, the view from gated communities, mansions and penthouses is aalutary and spectacular.

John Bolton is one of eight Romney advisers who signed letters drafted by the Project for a New American Century, the neoconservative advocacy group founded in the 1990s, urging the Clinton and Bush administrations to attack Iraq.

American foreign policy has been hijacked by foreign interest agendists.

The Israeli security doctrine pays an annuity to its military industrial complex and/or homeland security polic state complex; and through federal american contracts the Israeli clique and its American mirror have now merged. Big Oil allied with the artificial Gulf oil concessions also greatly benefits from this doctrine merger, as do the usurious intermediaries financing the expenditures.

The unity of Israeli American doctrines then follows political economy, conceptualizing Israel as a cash cow financial enterprise (for the unification of interests in gulf oil, weapons dealers, think tanks, transnational usury) is fully explanatory of why the US-Israel pursue losing wars that hurt the interests of their subject peoples.

Indeed, a long losing series of wars is far more profitable than a quick win with peace.

Most Americans still consider torture, assassination, indefinite detention and mass surveillance to be not just repugnant but deeply un-American.

Working through neoconservative intellectuals and other agents of influence, Israel clearly intends to hurry us on from the residual republican, Christian America that condemned such practices, to the post-Christian, post-moral empire that they believe is required for the defense of Israel. It is also very important to them that if Israel does it, then we must do it also, so that we cannot say “we would not do that; we are better than that”. And so we are groomed, accustomed to doing things that would have aroused disgust and contempt in our forefathers.

Some of Mr. Bacevich’s points are well taken but has “harmony based on tolerance and mutual respect” ever sustained any peace for very long? That kind of peace is far too squishy a concept to command the allegiance of someone with conservative inclinations. Peace among nations is not achieved by moralizing (Woodrow Wilson, our lest favorite president around here, thought that). Not that we’re doing it right now either.

If “Full Spectrum Dominance” now defines “Pax Americana”, one legitimately can ask just how, and even if temporarily viable, for how long, this can be sustained.

Even more stunning than how one can ‘create’ foes or opponents by misdirected actions, vague intentions, and questionable motives is how a once great republic’s citizens can have entered its twilight, yet still believe they are in light of noon sun, subject to delusions perpetuated by politicians and cronies, whose only true concern is self-aggrandizement for power, wealth and status, and who long ago have become indifferent to what the original limited intentions were in founding this polity.

It is because Romney has placed himself so solidly in the neo-con camp that come this November, this conservative will be voting 3rd party openly, proudly and with no reservations.

Obama really might be a socialist, as so many on the right claim, but in comparison to a committment to on-going and open-ended military conflict, which Mr. Romney promises, it is easily the lesser of the two evils.

Curious that Bacevich calls Chavez a dictator. I thought he was elected, and is likely to be reelected. Moreover he has an opposition more virulent by far than what exists here in the good ole USA. Perhaps it is simply that Bacevich doesn’t like his style (and opposition to almost all U.S. policies towards the south and the third world.

We are bankrupting ourselves (morally, spiritually, and financially)in order that the Military-Industrial Complex and other assorted Ladrones Que Mandan might sell us the rope with which we hang ourselves.

While I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Mr. Bacevich’s articles over the years, as well as his captivating book, “Washington Rules;” my reading of U.S. history says we have always been a full-spectrum-dominance empire. I don’t think his career would survive such a statement.

We started as part of the British Empire, certainly a full-spectrum-dominance empire, and then became our own rapacious empire. After the Revolutionary War we spent the next 120 or so years stealing land from, and slaughtering Native Americans as well as stealing about 1/2 of Mexico’s land mass at gun-point in the mid-1900th century. With that done we took Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. We’ve invade numerous Latin American countries and overthrew their governments; pure imperialism. We overthrew the duly-elected government in Iran in 1953, overthrew the duly-elected government of Guatemala the following year as well as got involved in the French colonial war in Indo-China that same year by funding the French with U.S. tax dollars. I’ll stop now, no need for me to belabor the point.

The twice Medal of Honor recipient and United States Marine Corps Major General, Smedley Butler, said it quite succinctly, “War is a racket.” Read about him at the link below. His speech and book, War Is a Racket,” should be required reading for every U.S. high school student.

I think the author is exactly right about his main point, though I don’t agree with all the details. Israel and America are in fundamentally different situations, and it’s a huge mistake for the US to adopt an Israeli-style foreign policy.

The converse is equally important to remember, especially for many paleos who identify with what remains of the Israeli left. It would be suicidal for Israel to adopt the kind of foreign policy that’s appropriate to the US.

America is hated for what it does, not for what it is. Israel is hated for what it is, not for what it does. Those facts have pretty strong foreign policy implications.

The first modern democracy in the western world (Venice) had some useful laws that we should copy. First: if there is a war, the president (Doge) has to gather his personal arms and join the troops at the front. Second: The Doge may not hold meetings in private with any foreign or business leaders – all such meetings must take place in the parliament. Third: the penalty for corruption is death. Fourth: an electoral system that guarantees proportional representation for all groups (and was more advanced than any western “democracy” has today).

The Venetian Republic already existed when the aristocracy of Britain was guaranteeing their “right” to abuse the population (Magna Carta) and existed for over 500 years (finally succumbed to Napoleon). How we have degenerated since then.

How very odd an entire analysis of how the US foreign policy system has morphed into a replication of the Zionist operation in Israel and there is no mention of AIPAC.

AIPAC buys the alliance of almost all Congress members who dutifully, for money, vote 98% in favor of anything Israel dreams up.

Israel’s economy is going just fine thanks to huge US subsidies. They also get to run a trade surplus with the US. The US military protects them so they can amuse themselves with hammering barely armed natives.

The US funds their giant ghetto walls, too. As the US told Russia to tear down walls, the US helps the Zionists erect even bigger walls in Palestine.

……Aaron in Israel said on September 11, 2012 at 4:15 am ………. “Israel is hated for what it is, not for what it does”……..

Aaron,

I think you have it backwards. Israel is hated for what it has done and does. I say that with an extensive background reading about the Middle East that includes books written by distinguished writers from a wide variety of backgrounds: Palestinian Christians, Palestinian Muslims, Israeli Jews, American Jews and British experts on the subject. And, I’ve spent time in several Middle Eastern countries and have lived in one, Turkey. Think about the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara. And, never forget the USS Liberty.

Righteous and self-chosen as they are, it would never occur to them that if they stop attacking (stealing, bombing, killing), the Palestinians will stop firing. Only in the US and Israel is state terrorism “self-defense” and self-defense “terrorism.”

When asking the question of why something is or has come about it is always informative to follow the money flow. Policies, especially right wing policies, are almost always dictated by quid pro quo and the money flow. The moral high ground republicans like to advertise has everything to do with getting elected and practically nothing to do with policy. Why is US foreign policy morphing into military dominance, projection of power, coersion by military might with a proven and continuously trained and constantly updated military machine? Follow the money. Speculating and assigning reasons for the status quo are usually just hindsight justifications by those making money and sponsoring the policies beneficial to their enterprise. In the name of national security… ad infinitum.

This is one of a number of creative approaches to solving the Israel/Palestine problem. I have myself suggested it. But you didn’t finish the thought.

We declare Israel the 51st state, convert the IDF by integrating it with the US military, where they will of course be under US control.

Then the fun. No more Knesset, no more Israeli sovereignty. Just another state among 51 living under the US Constitution. Any American can go there, any American can live there, no religious preferences, no racial or ethnic discrimination allowed. So no more “Jewish” state. All the Palestinians from wherever they have been living as refugees, get called back, restored to their former Palestinian homes. Return all stolen property, settle all disputes making compensation as warranted. Then everyone lives together in a multi-ethnic situation like everyone else in the US.

I also question the idea the the US haa become Isrealified. They are two very different countries with very different histories.

The US came out strong after WW2 and determined to stay that way. The small ‘military incursions’, black ops, targeted assassination of leaders, and coups were invented by the US to maintain its post-war dominance. The nuclear arms race in the ’50s and ’60s sowed the seeds of economic collapse way before Reagan.

I think the both the US and Israel developed their military doctrines based on their own unique histories.changing nature of warfare in the US is an internal development based on internal dynamic. Vietnam inspired the Colin Powell Doctrine, which was then overthrown by the invasion of Iraq. The world reacted negatively to its over-reach and incompetence.

What’s a country to do? American military might is based on training and superior technology. Obama is shaping military doctrine to a skeptical world with a ‘less is more’ doctrine for a 21st century, putting to rest thoughts of other majore ‘preemptive wars’. Why expend the money and troops when you can shape the world “lite”. It may draw from Israeli strategy, but current US strategy harkens back to the CIA operations in another era when Americans had had enough of massive killing.

Israel’s military doctrine arose from a small country waging any type of warfare it could come up with against its enemies. The writer describes striking convergence between the two in 2012. But each country got to this point based on their own history and needs.

Wish Canadian conservatives were more outspoken than they are around the issue of Israel. Canada’s ruling party is dominated by a core who are very-pro Israel – maybe even more so than their American counterparts.

Kicking out Iranian diplomats by PM Harper was a rash and unneeded reaction to a reason they haven’t been able to explain beyond Iran saying bad things about Israel. They claim Iran is a threat to the world yet they have no real air force, no ICBMs, a pathetic navy and ground forces stuck in the 80′s. It’s a silly notion that they are some massive threat to world peace.

The people most at threat from Iran are the Iranian people and by continually demonizing and sidelining the nation we just reinforce and entrench the ruling regime.

Bacevich is quite right to warn of the dangers to US national security, from succuming to Israeli-style illusions of what constitutes “security”. China and Russia have a larger stake in a reasonably stable Afghanistan, yet the US has largely wasted $1 billion on an ill-conceived military adventure there.

What if Israeli foreign policy is americanized! My argument is based on the purpose, the one that is declared openly. When the hunting shade was communism, it was everywhere and everything. It haunts you even in your dreams, maybe Mcarthur would agree with my opinion!
In case of Israel, holocaust attacks them from the future. The future seems to have it written all over it: Holocaust is coming, kill before being killed.
In American case, it would sound like: Communism can return, leave no place for it. 9/11 became the holocaust – hunting from the future. It’s all preventive wars.
In this case i see israelification as a preventification. A hunt for the possible, not the real threat.
The more often you’ll have wars the more likely and more easily you’ll convince your nation that it’s worth it.
I think that once you can convince your nation that preventive wars are needed you’ll clean the way for ‘achieving’ whatever your ‘real’ intentions are.

While I understand your article is more about the US, your premise about Israel is flawed.

Israel does not seek military supremacy for its own sake, but because it has been the target of a myopic goal since its inception- the destruction of a Jewish state. Until Israel’s right to exist is accepted by not only the Palestinians, but by Islam itself, Israel will constantly be in the scope of its neighbors.

If your argument is that we, Americans, no longer support Israel’s right to exist, or NEED to exist, then surely we have not learned the lessons from our “greatest generation” and history is sure to repeat itself.

To Ryan B.
Some years ago; your PM Olmert stated that Israel should be ready in about 10-15 years to declare her borders. Until that happens; her neighbors will never trust your statement of her “right to exist”. It is her greed by action and by planning is what’s the root cause of the wars in the Middle East. She has become the cancer that keeps spreading.
Is Israel going to ever declare her borders?

One can get tempted to forgive Israel its barbarity; after all, the Jews are relatively new at this business of running a civilized state. They are what might be called “sub-civilized” (to call them primitive would be to insult peaceable tribes).

But that the US, with its history of leading the reinvention of democracy for modernity, should slide into this sub-civilized state is sad — and rather frightening, if like me, you happen to be a citizen of one of America’s vassal states.

The subtext of every contravention of international law by both the US and Israel is a dare: “Who’s gonna stop me?” Neither country is used to having someone answer “Me!” That seems clear in Israel’s case, given Bibi’s temper tantrum of the last few days in which he cites — of all things! — Washington’s “moral right” to stop Israel from waging an illegal war against Iran.

Bibi’s behaviour can be seen as a clear echo of how far the US has fallen in the eyes of the REAL international community (not the one usually cited by Obama and Hillary, meaning the US and its vassals).

I think Bacevich is America’s truest voice on the subject of American militarism, which is out of control with its “hit lists” and its drone-delivered hellfire missiles aimed at families, wedding parties, and funerals.

Reading these comments is like a visit to Neverland. Since the moment of Israel’s creation, the Arabs have made no secret of their desire for its annihilation. And if there was no Israel, the Arab political elites would have had to invent it – ever since Israel’s creation, Arab dictators have carefully nurtured hatred of Israel because it offered the most convenient way to keep the Arab masses from noticing how they were being plundered and repressed by their own political elites. The same goes for the Palestinian problem. Many millions of people were displaced by war in the 1940s and many millions of them rebuilt their lives in new lands. You will only find the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Arabs who fled the 1948 war still living in refugee camps. God forbid a Sunni Muslim Arab state would integrate the grandchildren of Sunni Muslim Arab refugees. No, millions must be spent to keep them forever in refugee camps, lest peace with Israel become possible. So – do you remember how Israel returned Sinai to Egypt in 1956 in exchange for US guaranties that access to the Red Sea would not be blocked – and then when Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran the Americans twiddled their fingers, leading to the Six day War? Then the great majority of land won in 1967 was returned to Egypt in exchange for what must be the coldest peace in history (and who knows how long that will last under the Muslim Brotherhood?) And remember how Israeli forces left Southern Lebanon after having gained international promises that the militias would not be allowed to take it over again? That really worked out well. And when Israel pulled out of Gaza and Hamas stepped in? There is a very good reason why Israel strives to maintain military superiority over its neighbors; the weaker Israel becomes, the more suicidal it becomes for her to take risks for peace.

Good article and even better responses. I just don’t see anything we say or do or think as being of consequence. The inebriate of power coupled with fearful perceptions, justified or not, probably means more of the same. Fran Macadam may have the most salient single point. If Iraq has cost a trillion, and if the profit is 20-30%…some few are really rolling in dough, bloody money though it is.

Berel Dov Lerner, when you Zionists set your sights on Palestine you took a calculated gamble that the Arabs could be overawed and made to accept your Zionist state. They haven’t and never will and The United States of America has no responsibility to back your bad bet.

After decades of spying on us, interfering in our domestic politics, selling our technology to our enemies, etc. I’d say that Americans owe the State of Israel about as much as we do the Republic of Zimbabwe, nothing.

Reading this magazine(that is proudly calling itself, American Conservative) for the first time, I am amazed to see an article that is critical of Israel and more surprising is to see subsequent comments that are overwhelmingly agreeing with the piece. As an outsider (i.e. non-American), this is fascinating, watching your political commentators, congressmen and government administrators, one gets an impression that they are not allowed to say even one word critical of Israel, they go out of their way to find excuses or justification for Israel actions. Following the comments and conversation here, I find hope for the american society, that with more sane voices like yours here, america can once again be a force for good!

An interesting comparison, particularly the shifting concept of deterrence, from threat of action, to pre-emptive action. However, popular opinion does seem to be shifting the other way. There are rising waves of this sentiment on both the left and right, and independents are notably against further military entanglements. One may hope that in decades to come, this trend will continue.

Yes, the U.S. is exceedingly martial in its foreign policy right now. The question is, what are the alternatives? Clearly, neither dialogue nor sanctions are serving us well thus far. Doing nothing seems even less likely to mitigate threats. North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, China…all act with impunity not only against our interests but also against those of their democratic neighbors. Targeted killings in counties that amount to tribal patchworks rather than nation-states seem apropos when the alternatives are doing nothing or waging conventional war. With respect to full-spectrum dominance, I can only say that power is itself a finite resource. Like all other resources, it will be grappled for among those who have a chance at holding it. It’s somewhat naive to think that deliberate U.S. docility or pacifism would somehow encourage spontaneous (especially Chinese and Russian) benevolence toward us. Our most dangerous assumption by far is that everyone wants peace and freedom as much as we do. Some actually want unfettered power by any means, which they regard as necessary to their sovereignty and perpetuation — to be able to act with even greater impunity in the years to come, as the world’s tangible, finite resources shrink in their capacity to sustain ever-increasing populations. We (free peoples) DO require military superiority because forfeiting it to some alternative ideological masters would have a devastating effect on everyone, not just the United States or its allies.

Mary Foster wrote: “What are the alternatives?” and “Our most dangerous assumption …is that everyone wants peace and freedom as much as we do…”

Oh dear.

Your commentary repeats the vague language of “threats” but fails to state exactly HOW US citizens are threatened by Iran, N. Korea. By what logic and right does the USA claim the RIGHT to control the resources and waters of a nation on the other side of the globe, such that Iran’s exertion of control over its own territory is declared (implicitly, by you) as a “acting with impunity” in a fashion that “threatens” American interests.
Your comment suggests the deeply embedded underlying assumption that the US — as Israel– are the self-chosen moral leaders of the universe. If that is the case, shouldn’t their behavior exhibit moral standards such as truth-telling, and refraining from killing innocents?

Dear Aaron: Israel is hated for what it does. The arbitrary arrest, beating, torture, imprisonment, and killing of Palestinians by the IDF, Shin Bet, et al, is not a secret – at least not outside of the USA. The bulldozing of Palestinian dwellings, the seizing of their water supplies, the destruction of their orchards, the denial of medical treatment – all of this is now known to people in the world outside Israel and the Occupied Territories. Israeli writers have played a large part in exposing these atrocities. It’s time to wake up from your murderous narcissist-nationalist daydream.